Jessamyjoy's travel blogs:
- Senegal 2007
- Two months translating, interpreting and... 2005
|
|
  | |  |
Sunday "Out"
Entry 21 of 33 | show all | print this entry |
This morning I decided to venture from my comfort zone of the familiar compound and go to church by myself in one of the places described to me by Fiona, although I couldn't at all picture in my mind where she meant. So, at just after 9 AM, because that's what time it starts and I'm slowly coming to accept event-based thinking over time-based, I stepped out into the crisp, cool morning, intentionally slowing my quick, get-there-now pace to a more appropriate casual, it'll-start-when-we're-all-there stroll. I clanged through the green metal gate into the openness of Sunday morning Parakou. The paved street wasn't especially busy so my three or four glances were enough to make sure I wouldn't be run over by a moto, bike or rickety car packed to the max speeding by. I'd been told, "Straight ahead. Follow the music." I didn't hear any music, so I stuck to the first instruction and made my way through the small, orange cement and mud shacks, acting as though I knew exactly where I was going and smiling at the curious standers-by. Through the first couple rows, I begin to notice little groups of women with multiple children walking in what seemed the same direction, some greeted me and confirmed by suspicion, so I went their general direction, crossing another larger dirt path before beginning to see a crowd disappearing into a corrugated metal building.
In the initial cool of the room I took a seat a wooden bench harder than the last two of Sundays past, on the women's right side of the room. People stared. I smiled. Deep breath. Who needs to feel comfortable anyway? A 20-something man stood behind two microphones in front of the 15 rows of benches and a wooden podium and spoke back and forth in French and Bariba. The rectangular church building consisted of a front and back wall made from crumbling, haphazard cement and mud, the front wall with a black board stuck into the majority of it in what seemed an afterthought, uneven blobs and smudges of cement holding it in as it proclaimed the date, the verse of the day and displayed a lonely, unexplained map of Benin. The longer side walls were sheets of corrugated metal, end to end, three high, tied together with rusted metal twine through holes jabbed in the overlapping inch. The walls and ceiling were supported by natural braches of trees, unpeeled, unprocessed in any way, their knobs and uneven edges not even serving to better lean against one another or connect together. The dirt floor made the slightest bit of mud when my feet began to sweat after the first hour.
After roughly 20 minutes of announcements back and forth in the two languages, we come to the introductions. Ah yes, I'd somehow forgotten standing and introducing myself at the "big French church" and being introduced by Jon at the Fulani church. He starts with the men's left side of the room. No one budges. Moves to the right. Asks in both languages. I stand. "Well, I'm not gonna be able to hide." No one laughs. I continue, "I came from the United States as a translator interpreter with SIM. French English." The announcement guy's mouth twitches ever so slightly in recognition or solidarity, as he too is an interpreter, as is most everyone here who speaks multiple languages. I say thank you for the welcome and sit quickly back down. He asks me again for my name and I give it a couple times, then he interprets. Everyone laughs. I feel better. My joke was just a few minutes delayed and at least some of the tension was cut. People appreciate a good joke and someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously.
The rest of the service proceeded normally. The only words I caught in the songs were "hallelujah" and "Yésus" and during prayer I marveled at the well-orchestrated punctuations of "amen" throughout with the most resounding like an elbow in my side letting me know to look up and open my eyes now. Prayers aren't interpreted. God's got it down.
A new interpreter stood up for the main message and was unfortunately not as good as the first, as he sometimes let his eyes wander around the ceiling searching for an expression or just nodded as if to say, "That's all I got." (For those of you who know, I wouldn't have been surprised if at the end of a sentence once or twice he gave an exasperated, "Point.") In any case, it was the first time I heard talk of "interpretation" and not "translation" and this made me infinitely happy in a two and a half hours that otherwise made my bum extremely sore. After about an hour, I was used to the occasional drips of sweat on my forehead and down my back, but the bullying heat of the bodies smashed around me shoulder to shoulder, or in my case, shoulder to dusty corrugated metal, began to push against the growing heat of the rising sun that slowly seeped into the metal and made it hot to the touch. I felt trapped between the two heats and thanked God that it was technically a day cool enough for babies to be in wool caps and not a sweltering day that probably would have had me passed out but still sitting up in the cramped space. No breeze wafted through the rickety walls, despite the several varieties of lizards that zipped up and down the cement front wall, indicating space existing somewhere. The message was about Jonah and the whale and was interpreted at one or two sentence intervals, which I have to say, made it much less follow-able. We sang. Took offering. Took another one for the kids day next week. Sang. Prayed. And at last, just when I really began to think that any longer and I wouldn't be able to get my stiff, aching legs to stand, were dismissed.
I'd recognized two faces, a pastor who'd only spoken briefly and one of the girls who works in the guesthouse, but as we filed out into the breezy, refreshing air, I didn't see either of them. I walked slowly, looking around and nodding and smiling as people braved a look my way, but in the end headed home without the after church chatter you find at any and every church but that is rendered rather difficult when you don't speak the language, don't know a soul and are blaringly white in a crowd of faces 99% the same deep black that didn't bat an eye in the small oven we just narrowly escaped from.
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries by jessamyjoy, from Benin or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
8 votes 
